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Crab Tang Hoon (Glass Noodles)

Crab tang hoon (螃蟹冬粉) aka crab with glass noodles, is a popular dish in our local zi char scene. A dish like this, as with all seafood zi char dishes, does not come cheap when ordered outside. But you can make this dish at a fraction of the cost at home.

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Though this dish is more local than Thai, I still adapted my trusty Thai recipe for making this dish, because it always yields maximum results with minimum effort for me. There are some differences between this crab version as compared to the scallop or prawn glass noodle recipes. One, a crab needs at least 15 minutes of cooking, so I stir-fry them first before adding to the main claypot. And two, crab juices are naturally saltier than scallops and prawns, so the seasonings need to be toned down. Don’t worry if you don’t have a claypot, just cook and simmer everything in a wok.

This is my first crab dish, after 11 years of keeping this recipe blog. I love crabs but I never got past the phobia of killing the crab myself, even though I have seen my mum done it at home when I was young. As you might have heard, crabs must be slaughtered and cooked as soon as possible for maximum freshness. Sheng Siong at Tampines central regularly sells freshly slaughtered crab in their seafood fridge. You can also pick a live crab from the tank and they can slaughter it for you on the spot. Besides Sheng Siong, you can also find this service at the wet market. I prefer Sheng Siong, because they discard the top shell by default, so you pay by weight only for the main meaty part of the crab. The top shell makes up 1/4 of the total cost of each crab. I bought the whole crab with the top shell for vanity (photography) purpose. Anyway once you reached home, put the crab in the fridge immediately and cook it as soon as possible, latest by the end of the day. So now that I finally found a solution to my crab-killing phobia (by getting someone else to do it for me :P), I’m looking forward to making more crab dishes next year.

Yes, I am also contented to have someone else handle and clean the crabs for me if I want to cook crabs at home. Sheng Siong is good leh! Here they will weigh everything first, remove any parts e.g. top shell, they already charge you for it :(